Tuesday, September 06, 2005

The MP3 players impact on traditional radio listening

During the twelve months ending December 15, 2004, Bridge Ratings conducted an eye-opening series of studies related to iPod/MP3 player libraries.

During 2005 an on-going follow-up study has been undertaken.

Study goal: To learn about radio listener music preferences and the MP3 player's impact on traditional radio listening

Methodology:

Two groups of music consumers were tracked.

A) Listeners whose listening to traditional radio has decreased at least fifteen percent over the previous 9 months.

B) Listeners whose listening to traditional radio has maintained, increased or decreased less than ten percent in the previous 9 months.

Each group was divided into music constituencies, i.e., participants were placed into groups representing their primary radio listening. For example, individuals whose favorite station was Country, were placed into a Country constituency. These groupings allowed us to study music purity when studying the music file selections on their digital players. (see charts below)
1200 persons 12+ in each of the above categories were tracked weekly over a period of three months in 2004. The 2005 studies have used the same structure. During this time, each participant was willing to share the contents of his/her digital music player.


Findings of Interest:

  • During 2004 on average 60% of participants made some change in the files on their digital music players each week (adding, deleting or both). In 2005 that number has increased to 68%.
  • 14% changed files more frequently than once a week in 2004 increasing to 20% in 2005.
  • 5% changed files daily
  • In 2004 17% made some changes every two weeks decreasing to 13% in 2005.
  • 4% made no change to their files
  • 88% in 2004, 90% in 2005 of the participants included more than one music "category" on their digital music players, i.e. almost all participants in the study have a variety of musical tastes.

This last point raises a very interesting and important point: today's radio listeners prefer diversity in their music entertainment. Both groups' radio listening experience suggests that if there is lower time-spent-listening it is a function of a desire to hear more musical diversity and thus cume more different stations per week.

This higher desire for more variety of music radio station choice each week is the motivator for listeners to seek additional music diversity by managing their personal music choices through MP3 players.

The study found that a significant portion of traditional radio's listener base is driven to alternative digital entertainment choices by lack of musical or programming diversity on traditional radio.

The diversity of the music on the digital players of each format constituency group was then plotted to give us a sense of commonality - if there was any - among the types of variety sought by each musical constituency. What we found was that, yes, most constituencies tend to prefer at least one music type in addition to the one which defines their favorite station music preference.

What is clear is that radio listeners who report preferences for radio stations with specific/narrow music formats have broader musical tastes than previously quantified. Over 85% of those interviewed for this project told us that the digital player offered them custom entertainment diversity in one compact solution and this was the number one reason they were spending more time with their digital players and less with traditional radio.

posted by Bob Narley @ 11:09 AM